Kelly and Hue first meet
by New Tales from the Despatch
Summary: A PPC interlude. When a pair of agents are assigned to each other, they don't always get along.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The PPC was created by Jay and Acacia. Tales from the Despatch was added by Meg. Kelly and Hue belong to me, but Color-sprites are owned by Hallmark.

Kelly studied a crossword puzzle as she wandered through the hallways of HQ. She had never been to RC 925 before, but it wouldn't have made it easier to find if she had. She became slightly excited to read a room number in the 900's, but she had been here long enough to know that she wasn't even close.

After she grew bored with the puzzle, she popped her chewing gum a few times and decided to head to the cafeteria. The way her luck was going, there was a chance that she would end up at the cafeteria, but wandering aimlessly hadn't worked. She almost missed the door to RC 925 as she wandered past, but she noticed it just in time. As she knocked on the door, she wondered what her new partner would be like.

A small creature opened the door. It stood about two feet tall, and resembled a ball of fur on legs. A pair of beady eyes and a pink nose were the only features distinguishable in the mass of black fur. It wore blue mittens, socks, and a belt. "Hello?" he chirped in a squeaky voice.

"What are you supposed to be?" Kelly had seen stranger things living in the RCs, but it was useful to know the species of your roommate's pet.

"Do you speak English?" he asked.

"What do you think, wise guy? Never met someone from Brooklyn before?" Kelly bent down so that she could intimidate the fuzzball.

He made a placating gesture with his hands, then reached behind his back and pulled out a headset communicator. He pointedly showed it to Kelly before settling it on his head.

She straightened up and crossed her arms. "Very funny. I've been assigned to this Response Center."

He gestured inside. "English is hard, do you have a comm?"

Kelly rifled in her bag to humor the pipsqueak. Whoever her partner was, they sure knew how to go out of their way for a joke. Her communicator was a bulky walky-talky, but it came with a headset. She put it on and sat in the room's only chair.

"I'm Hue," he said before launching into a string of gibberish that sounded like a 33 record played at 78 rpm. The comm's built-in translator made him sound like a teenaged boy. "So you are my new partner? I'm happy to meet you. I would like for you to learn how to understand Happytalk and I will try to understand you."

"Are you serious? You look like a stuffed animal! Why would someone assign something like you to Despatch?" Kelly had just lost her patience.

"I'm good with a tranquilizer gun," Hue supplied.

Kelly snorted. "Great, a violent stuffed animal."

Hue shook his head. "Not violent, just stunning them so they stop doing not-nice things."

Kelly took her cigarettes from her bag and stuck one in her mouth. She looked at him pointedly for a moment, but he just watched her. Kelly then lit her cigarette and took a drag. She had noticed that he had said 'violent' in English. "You're like one of those Care Bears that my niece likes."

Hue had frowned at the smell of the smoke, but then he smiled as he said, "Care Bears are heroes. Did she like anything else? Or, what do you like?"

(Note: When Hue's speaking English, it should be a lot more broken and just saying enough to convey the idea, but I decided to make it easier to read instead of being accurate.)


	2. Chapter 2

_(A/N) This part was written a couple of years after I wrote the first part._

Though the console usually went off within moments of the agents first meeting each other, the one in RC 925 remained silent while Kelly and Hue worked out their communication differences. Hue took off his translator and quickly figured out that Kelly was speaking English under her accent. However, Kelly was having a harder time.

"Gront hubgo wonk flerble smich morp," Hue said. "Wikkle jassip lorb pendle hazeen yongo wo glax-smeem plizzy frerp."

Despite Hue's insistence, Kelly didn't believe that she would understand most of what he was saying if she just stopped focusing on understanding it.

"Come to DoSAT with me," Hue finally suggested. "You should molky din rizerpen."

"Come again?" Kelly asked.

"Meet my friends," Hue translated.

As they walked down the hall, Kelly said, "It's kinda lucky you have friends in DoSAT. Or maybe not. I'm kinda attached to my analog CAD, but it's pretty fragile."

"What's an A-CAD?" Hue asked.

"It uses dials instead of a readout and it takes some work to understand it. It's mostly for people with Dresden disease and other walking techbanes, but my mentor liked them because they would usually just throw a spring instead of explode or melt," Kelly said.

"Qizzy-yerp!" Hue squeaked enthusiastically. "That sounds much better than the normal ones."

Kelly worried a bit. "What did your CADs do?"

"I haven't been on a mission yet," Hue explained. "I just watched the training videos, though I skipped the Sue ones because they were too mean."

Hue's friends were Misspelled Minions from Despicable Me. They were about three feet tall and looked like yellow pills with three eyes. One shouted "Hue!" before speaking in a rapid popcorn-language that reminded Kelly of Italian.

"Margot, Grew, molky din rizerp Kelly," Hue said. "Bizerp jasser vin mirg Gizzle-nof."

Grew chuckled. "Ko pak tis nobif pata da traba"

Kelly couldn't understand Minionese either, but his dismissive attitude was clear. Hue argued back. After a few more exchanges, their conversation became less confrontational. Kelly leaned against a desk and soon her mind began to drift.

After maybe a half hour, Kelly felt her ears burning, and she heard Margot say that the best way to test was to start making insults.

Hue countered that he didn't want to do that, and that there had to be another way to tell if they were making progress.

"Hey!" Kelly shouted. "What? How?"

Hue commented that he thought Kelly got it.

"That didn't sound like a question, but no, I don't understand you yet," Kelly said. "I did for a moment though."


End file.
